I'm brand new to Linux. I'm trying to install it on a 5-year old Samsung laptop. I can run Vector Live successfully from a CD, so want to install it to the hard drive.

First I downloaded the full install package and went through all the install steps. After completing the install, on rebooting, it got so far in the process and hung when it got to the "Loading multiuser GUI" stage.

On the advice of a friend, I thought I'd try installing from the Live CD (using the vllive install option). My friend had successfully done this on two different machines, even though he had had problems trying to do a full install on those same machines.

When I reboot after going through the install process, here's what happens:

(1) I first get the manufacturer's splash screen (as you would expect)

(2) Then I get the LILO screen with the options of loading the graphical or text versions of Linux

It looks like your installation was successful, but there is a problem with the configuration of X-windows.

Try selecting the "tui" option on the LILO screen. Log in as root and run "vxconf" to change X settings. First try the default settings. Now run "startx" to test. If that doesn't work, choose the "vesa" option. If that works, you can use it as a starting point and work forwards from there.

Thanks for your post. Unfortunately, selecting the "tui" option on the LILO screen doesn't change anything - I just get the same messages, then a momentary black screen, then the machine restarts again.

Which VL version did you install (5.9, 6.0, Light, Standard, SOHO, KDE-Classic)?Which VL Live version runs successfully on it?

- I can successfully run VL Light 6.0 on it. All peripherals work (including WiFi adapter), and it's super fast. So I did the install direct from inside VL Light 6.0 Live (via System > vlliveinstall). (I had already tried to do a standard install using the non-live version, but that wouldn't boot up either – kept getting stuck at the "Loading multiuser GUI" stage.)

What seems odd is that clearly the environment will work on this machine. For some reason, it just doesn't want to load it from the hard disk.

(2) Then I get the LILO screen with the options of loading the graphical or text versions of Linux

I just did two installs of vl-light with vlliveinstaller and on neither occation did lilo set-up a tui option. (or even offer to.)Can someone verify that vlliveinstaller does or does not have the capability to set up a tui option in the lilo boot menu.

If not, I'm thinking that something went arye with the live install and you are still booting to the original install from the full install cd.

I just did two installs of vl-light with vlliveinstaller and on neither occation did lilo set-up a tui option. (or even offer to.)Can someone verify that vlliveinstaller does or does not have the capability to set up a tui option in the lilo boot menu.

If not, I'm thinking that something went arye with the live install and you are still booting to the original install from the full install cd.

One thing makes me think this is probably not the case: I repartitioned and reformatted the HD during the vlliveinstaller process, thereby (presumably) wiping any previous full install on it.

However, given that I'm new to Linux, I'm quite prepared to be proven wrong.

I will have a look at this later. However, one question at this stage: when you say "If this gets you to the command line login, you can work from there.", what exactly do you mean "work from there"? My goal is to get to a point where VL will happily load from boot without further manual intervention. (This is important as the machine will probably used by one of my kids for web browsing.)

I did what you said and I seem to have arrived at a login screen saying "Vector - brought to you by Vector-Linux", with a picture of a penguin on the L/H side. There was a "vector login:" prompt and I didn't know what to put so I tried both "vector" and "admin" with the password "vector" and got "login invalid" with both of them.

Any idea what I need to put in here? I don't think I changed any of the default login or password info when I installed it.